GOP super PACs gear up to fight tea party

Republican operatives want to help establishment candidates fend off tea party challenges with a new weapon: unlimited cash.

Consultants and attorneys — including the co-founder of the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC — are laying the groundwork or have already filed paperwork for dozens of super PACs organized to support individual candidates running next year.

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The effort is the biggest reevaluation of the Republican Party’s outside money strategy since the dawn of the super PAC era — bringing traditional big dollar donors into the primary races that pulled the party in a direction that alienated those donors in the first place.

“The prime targets for this sort of a strategy are incumbents that expect a primary election challenge,” said Charlie Spies, the co-founder of Restore Our Future, which spent more than $140 million to support Mitt Romney. “Even if candidates trust American Crossroads will step in for a Senate race or American Action Network or Congressional Leadership Fund for a House race, they are more likely to focus resources on general election races than getting involved in primary contests.”

Recent election cycles have been dominated by well-founded conservative groups such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads network and the Koch-linked Americans for Prosperity. But those organizations have largely stayed out of primary fights, where tea party-associated groups have helped unseat more moderate Republicans.

Super PACs — unlike congressional campaigns — are permitted to raise and spend unlimited funds. The downside, however, is that the campaign and the PAC are forbidden from coordinating. The Federal Election Commission requires a strict firewall between a campaign and a super PAC – meaning that a trusted aide usually needs to helm the outside effort.

The strategy shift reflects the growing internecine warfare between Republicans that will likely characterize the 2014 and 2016 campaigns — as tea party and social conservative factions battle more moderate and establishment Republicans. The Senate Conservatives Fund, for instance — founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint before he decamped to the Heritage Foundation — has vowed to attack GOP candidates deemed insufficiently conservative.

Establishment Republicans say previous efforts to sack moderates only served to boost unelectable candidates like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell or Missouri’s Todd Akin who blew the GOP’s chances in winnable general elections.

Spies has already set up more than a dozen super PACs in this vein, but declined to discuss the specifics of his efforts. Other top-tier Republican consultants that have Senate or House super PACs in the works also wouldn’t comment, but the names of many of the mysterious groups that have filed with the FEC this year reference key congressional battleground states like Georgia, Arkansas, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alaska and North Carolina.

Others like the pro-Sen. Mitch McConnell Kentuckians for Strong Leadership or the pro-Sen. David Vitter Fund For Louisiana’s Future are already off the ground and running.

Single-candidate super PACs also is a sign party leaders believe donors are unhappy with the results of big money groups in recent years — and are willing to take their checkbooks elsewhere.

Rove’s Crossroads groups budgeted more than $300 million on a plan to defeat President Barack Obama and flip the Senate to the GOP in 2012 — and failed. The perceived stumbles of Crossroads in 2012 led immediately to recriminations within the conservative movement about Rove’s dominance of the outside money apparatus. It also means donors want to know more about how their money is spent.

“I think you will see the donor community very focused on metrics and outcomes,” said John Murray, who founded the Young Gun Action Fund super PAC.

“The donors are refocusing their attention from relationships to accountability,” said Republican political consultant Brian Wise of Wise Public Affairs. “No longer can you call a donor and say I need you to write a check for $500,000. You are finding donors are asking for detailed strategic plans. Even if they have an ongoing relationship with whoever is behind the super PAC.”

In the special Massachusetts Senate election to replace John Kerry in 2013, a single donor bankrolled the deceptively-named Americans for Progressive Action on behalf of GOP senate candidate Gabriel Gomez. California winery owner John Jordan put $1.7 million behind Gomez — even as major GOP groups like Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity took a pass on the race.